Traveling allows you to explore other cultures, visit historical landmarks, and open up your own world to others. Unfortunately, traveling is not as simple as stepping off the plane and going on a sightseeing adventure. New continents and new countries bring about their own set of challenges for the foreign stomach. Put simply: What your body may be accustomed to in your home may be a disaster for the stomach of another traveler and vice versa.

Travelers’ Diarrhea, also called Travelers’ Sickness, is the most common form of illness experienced by those looking to see the world. Let’s discover the causes behind Travelers’ Diarrhea and how you can prevent it so that it doesn’t ruin your next trip.

What is Travelers’ Diarrhea?

As suffers of eczema can attest to, this skin disorder ranges from mild to severe. It is an inflammation of the skin that often appears in the form of blisters. These blisters are described as dry, itchy, and scaly. Extreme eczema may result in bleeding due to the scratching of the blisters. As awful as eczema can be, you can rest assured that you will not pass it along to friends and family as it is not contagious. While no cure exists for eczema, studies are revealing more effective ways for treating and preventing outbreaks. One of the best, all-natural ways of treating eczema comes in the form of gut-friendly probiotics.

Let’s take a look at how these amazing strains of bacteria are bringing relief to children and adults that are suffering from eczema.

How Do Probiotics Work?

What many people do not realize is that eczema, while skin-based, is a sign of an immune system that is not functioning properly. What’s more, do you know where the majority of your actual immune system is located? In your stomach! More than three quarters of your total immune system can be found in your gut. Beneficial bacteria also lives in your gut so it should be no surprise that if there is a disruption in the balance of intestinal gut flora, you will see symptoms appear on the outside of your body.

When you encourage a well-balanced and diverse culture of flora through probiotic supplementation, you are enhancing your immune response. Your immune system is better equipped to distinguish what is dangerous such as a pathogen and what is harmless such as an antigen.

Can Probiotics Prevent Eczema?

Probiotics are a highly effective way of preventing and treating the symptoms of eczema. Several age groups have been tested in a number of studies for their reaction to probiotic supplementation with an emphasis on the severity of existing eczema and preventing further outbreaks.

According to a study published in the Current Opinion in Allergy and Clinical Immunology, probiotics were shown to be successful at preventing eczema up to the age of two. Children continued to benefit from the probiotics until the age of four.

Childhood to Pre-Teen

A study from Taiwan published in the British Journal of Dermatology took subjects, ranging in ages from 2 to 14, who all had severe cases of eczema and provided them with probiotic supplementation. After 8 weeks, researchers determined that the probiotic supplements had significantly improved the skin condition of the subjects.

Teenage to Adulthood

In a ground breaking study published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, adults with a history of eczema and related skin conditions were given probiotic supplements or a placebo for 12 weeks. At the conclusion of the study, the results showed that the adults who had supplemented with probiotics experienced a dramatic improvement in their eczema while the placebo group reports no changes whatsoever!

What Is The Best Probiotic For Eczema?

There’s more to it than suggesting just one probiotic. Every individual is different and gut flora will vary drastically from person to person. Put simply: What works for one person may not work for another. With that said, there are strains of probiotics that have been determined to be the most beneficial across a wide spectrum of people. When shopping for a probiotic supplement, you will want to search for the following features:

Choose a multi-strain probiotic – At least 5 strains

Make sure it contains L. Acidophilus

Other suggested strains to select:

L. Plantarum

L. Rhamnosus

B. Bifidum

One of the best brands that you can buy is Probacto’s Probiotics. You can check out the supplement here.

Probiotics: Cream Vs. Capsule

If you have severe eczema, it would be highly recommended to make a capsule probiotic a part of your daily regimen as well as a topical cream for the worst areas of the breakout. Once the severity lessens, continue with a capsule probiotic supplement to help prevent further breakouts.

Conclusion

You don’t have to continue to suffer and be embarrassed of your eczema. Take an all-natural and scientifically-proven stand against eczema with probiotic supplements.

The health concern among individuals with regard to the safety of their food is on a high. People nowadays are not only looking for the nutritious effects of the contents of their diet but also the positive health benefits that they can render to them. Also, the major issue in that quest for functional foods is whether the food to be taken is synthetic or natural. People have preformed apprehensions regarding the administration of synthetic food with beneficial health effects.

Accordingly, the scientific community as well as the food industry are on the lookout for food products or supplements that are natural and without any side effects. The probiotics have been introduced to a large number of foods that range from cereals, beverages, fruit juices and meat products to make them functional foods.

Being A Non-Vegan:

A significant percentage of the world population are non-vegans. Although being non-vegan can be useful from the nutritive point of the diet in some regards, there are also crucial health concerns for the non-vegan population. The major component of the diet of the non-vegans includes meat based foods as a result of which the demand for such foods has increased tremendously. This has influenced the developmental procedures that are involved in the meat based industry. [Read more…]

The right treatment to the neurodegenerative diseases has largely eluded the human population for ages. A number of such diseases exist like the Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disorder, Huntington’s disease and other Schizophrenic disorders. Although each of the diseases has got their own set of characteristics but the thing that they have in common is the effect on brain and memory in all of these cases.

The current therapeutic regimens have tried to prevent the complications of these diseases through the inhibition of the disease causing products like aβ-plaque formation in the Huntington’s disease or the replacement of the dopamine cells in the substantia nigra of the mid brain in case of Parkinson’s disorder. However, all these therapies have provided very short term relief from the problems and the long-term benefits are still far away. [Read more…]

Flavour generally results from the breakdown of precursor compounds into components of both volatile and non-volatile forms with diversity in their physiochemical nature. While the volatile part of the compounds is responsible for the aroma and taste, the non-volatile exponents are mainly associated with the taste. A number of compounds actually render the aroma that we find in the food products- lactones, aldehydes, ketones, esters, short chain fatty acids, phenolic compounds, diacetyls and many more. The plants have been the original resources for quite a number of these flavouring agents and in recent times a knowledge about the original compounds have led to the development of synthetic compounds. [Read more…]

The last two decades have seen rapid improvements in the field of medical sciences. With the developments in the modern day technologies an increase in the number of aged population has taken place. The human race suffers from a wide array of health disorders that are mainly associated with aging. Some of the important complications with aging are osteoporosis, neurodegenerative diseases, immunological compromised situations and many more. Studies have found that the human diet and lifestyle have major contributory roles to play in the early aging and related complicacies. A good balanced diet, healthy lifestyle habits and the supplementation of probiotics can be employed to increase the lifespan of individuals and render them the property of healthy aging with lessened age associated complications. [Read more…]

A significant number of the world population is the victim of malnutrition. The perils of malnutrition has not made a distinction and has engulfed within it children and elderly alike. The children are the worst affected in the developing and under developed countries. Among the malnutrition cases, protein associated malnutrition is the most common. In the Indian subcontinent ~1/3 children suffer from the after affects of lack of protein in their diet which causes severe damage to the developmental progress in the age group. It is not that only the poorer section of the society suffers from such incomplete nutrition but a lack of knowledge about their diet makes the people from across society to face similar consequences. Lack of protein has been associated with the deficiency in innate immune responses like the ability to produce cytokines.

The traditional Indian fermented food curd (dahi) is formed by the coagulation of the milk protein casein through the activity of lactic acid producing bacteria. Through ages the general practice of curd preparation has involved the use of a batter with starter cultures containing strains of Lactobacillus. However, with the commercialization of the food product nowadays curd has even been prepared by the use of artificial compounds like rennet or other acidic compounds which reduces the beneficial effects as well as efficacy of the product. Nevertheless, with all its beneficial effects curd can definitely be used as a good probiotic food product with the application of knowledge based introduction of probiotic strains other than the ones which are already used as starter cultures. [Read more…]

One of the major concerns associated with human dietetics is the deficiency of protein content in the provided diet. It is also a common thing to notice that even though a good source of proteinaceous content is supplied through proper diet supplements, the host body is unable to convert them into proper absorbable form. As a result the body suffers from the basic building blocks the amino acids. A number of bacteria have been identified with higher efficiency of breaking down the protein content of our diet into the forms that are required for the growth, development, repair and regeneration of the body. Quite a few of the probiotic bacteria have been assessed for their protein hydrolyzing capabilities and the subsequent release of essential amino acids into the host body.

Enterococcus:

A good number of Lactobacillus species have been known to hydrolyze the milk casein and extract good nutritional value out of the fermented milk product. They are known to possess various cellular peptidases as well as proteinases, the enzymes required to bring about the fruitful metabolism of the protein of milk origin. There is very little knowledge available regarding the proteolytic ability of the probiotic bacteria from the genus Enterococcus. [Read more…]

Our forefathers for ages have used food products that have the presence of a multitude of microorganisms with beneficial health effects on the consumers. However, with due course of time only a few of the beneficial bacteria have made it to the headlines as probiotics. The other useful bacteria have remained in the dark due to lack of knowledge of the consumers and the industry alike. Also, the characterization and isolation of the bacteria have remained largely constrained.

As a result the probiotic potential from the bacterial strains of the two genera, Bifidobacterium and Lactobacillus have been utilized to the maximum extent. However, there is always the need to improve upon the existing probiotic strains from the aspect of higher resistance to extreme physiological conditions and provide their beneficial effects under specific set of health needs. From that regard these lesser known and under utilized bacterial strains can be quite beneficial as probiotics in due course of time if properly characterized and the knowledge gained about their utility through scientific research and clinical trials is spread to the industry and the consumers through the right forum. A number of such bacteria from different genera with probiotic potential have been identified till now. [Read more…]